Drabbling in Piracy
by justadram
Summary: <html><head></head>An ongoing collection of drabbles and ficlets, focusing on Jack and Elizabeth.</html>
1. Damsel

Title: _Damsel_

Prompt from blackpearlsails: damsel

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><p>"It certainly took you long enough."<p>

Jack cocked his head, hand hovering over the knife he'd intended to cut her restraints with. "Be nice, Lizzie, or I won't cut ye lose," he said, leaning in to whisper in her ear.

Elizabeth jerked her head to the side, rubbing her reddened wrists together. "_Fine_: I'm not a damsel in distress. I'll do it myself."

Jack watched with raised brows as she squirmed in the chair, trying to free herself. "Funny you didn't think of that earlier."

"Shut up."

"Gladly. I'll just sit back and," he paused, twirling his fingers, "watch you…_jiggle_."


	2. Twist

Title: _Twist_

Prompt from blackpearlsails

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><p>"Jack!"<p>

He spun on his heel, arms flailing. "My apologies. I wasn't told you were _indisposed_," he lied, putting his back to her.

"Lecher," Elizabeth cursed with a splash.

He reached for the gilded looking-glass on her dressing table. "I could see a bony boy without as much fuss as you would make: be assured my back is turned."

She made an irritated noise. "Is this important?"

"Decidedly," he vowed, as he twisted the glass just so. One long white leg extended out of the tub, a foot on the rim; lovely, but he could see nothing else. "Bugger."

"Pardon?"

"I'll see you above deck, Lizzie."

"I thought it was important."

He smiled, adjusting his belt. "It was."


	3. Weather

**Title**: Weather  
><strong>Prompt<strong>: Blue Skies by Irving Berlin  
><strong>Character(s)Pairing(s)**: Elizabeth Swann, Jack Sparrow  
><strong>Rating &amp; Warnings<strong>: G, no warnings  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 242  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Weather comes in different forms.

* * *

><p>Elizabeth leaned against the rail, watching the water part before the Black Pearl.<p>

"Have you got your sea legs back?" a familiar voice queried her.

"Course I have."

He joined her at the rail. Two days in and it was still unnerving to see the changes in him, as they reminded her how changed she must seem to him—a fact which should not have bothered her, but did. So, she kept her eyes steadily trained on the horizon even as she felt his on her.

"It's been some years."

Yes, but she was once a captain too. For a time. "I don't see the cause for concern." She was determined to appear strong. Stronger than she felt after leaving that island for the first time in over a decade without the intention of returning. Not for some time at least. She couldn't yet fathom never. Even without her boy to hold her to the place. _There is Will_, she tried to tell herself. Once again, for the millionth time.

"Weather's the concern."

She scanned the skies. "Sky's perfectly clear."

A blackened, ringed finger gestured out over the grey waters. "A milky sky, Lizzie. Not a patch of blue to be found. Won't be day's end before we'll see rougher seas."

Had she once known that? "Won't make a difference." A patch of rain and rough waters was nothing. "I've already weathered quite a lot." She'd take her chances with the sea.


	4. Holding Back the Tide

**Title**: Holding Back the Tide  
><strong>Prompt<strong>: sandcastle  
><strong>Character(s)Pairing(s)**: Elizabeth Swann, Jack Sparrow  
><strong>Rating &amp; Warnings<strong>: G, no warnings  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 381  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Children have no thought for the future, but women know better.

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><p>The tides will carry away the castle, as they carried away the boy's father, but he toils at it with the determination of a child who has no thought for the future.<p>

"He's pretty enough."

She turns her head, smirking at the man sprawled in the sand beside her, his chest bare to the sun.

He nods at the boy. "Takes after his mother. Fortunate lad."

She digs her toes in the white sand, watching their visitor peer with squinted eyes at her boy. "I think he looks like Will when he was a boy."

He scrunches up his nose. "Give the boy more credit than that, love. Look at that expansive castle: that's a spirited young lad."

There's no point acknowledging his jabs at Will. She doesn't think he even believes them, saying them more out of habit than anything else. Or perhaps he's as off balance as she is, after being thrown together once more after so long. After thinking too much on the prospect of his ever making land here again.

She runs her hand over the collecting perspiration in the curve of her neck, brushing her hair off her shoulder, but his hand stops her. She watches a little warily as he wraps a lock of her sun-bleached hair around his work roughed fingers.

"As spirited as his mum," he muses. "No, the gods smiled on him. You would make an excellent lad, Lizzie."

"I _made_ an excellent lad," she corrects him.

"Aye, but this is the fair form I prefer," he says with a grin that catches the sunlight as he traces the slope of her neck with his knuckles.

She's uncertain, unnerved, her nerves are tightly wound, but the feeling isn't wholly unwelcome. It never was and after long years it is even less so.

She glances back towards her boy, who is working on a wide moat. The waves are already closer than they were moments ago, ceaseless and irrepressible.

He is the same. Jack is here, but the future laps at their feet, waiting to pull him away.

If she is as spirited as he thinks her to be, she best seize her opportune moment. She best tell him what she never managed to before and hope she can hold back the tide.


	5. A Word of Advice

Rating: K+  
>Characters: Teague, Jack<br>Pairing: Jack/Elizabeth (implied)  
>Word Count: 685<br>Author's Note: It was my intention to post this last night in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, but I drowned myself in a bottle of rum instead.

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><p>A Word of Advice<p>

Edward clattered about the room, knocking a wooden sword against tables and chairs and whatever else lay in his wake. The noise contrasted sharply with the slow strumming of Teague's guitar.

Jack considered him from a safe distance, leaning against a table with arms crossed over his chest. His father seemed unconcerned by either his son or Elizabeth son's appearance. Jack knew that Teague saw Edward regularly, but he had not had cause to come back to the Cove since Elizabeth had quit it. Nevertheless, his father was unmoved. He hoped Edward would never have cause to think as poorly of him as he did of Teague.

The strumming stopped and Teague met his gaze. "Why not settle down?"

"Excuse me?"

"I don't have time for pleasantries," Teague explained.

"Oh, yes, I can see that you're very busy. What pray do you mean, settle down?"

"Give up pirating," Teague said, looking down at his guitar once more. "Come to your bearings."

Jack turned his head at the sound of a particularly loud crash. Edward had successfully brought down a chair. "Well done," Jack congratulated him, earning a bright smile from the child.

"For the boy's sake."

Jack laughed. "Is that what you did?"

"I'm not the measure of you, Jackie."

"No, you're certainly not." He paused to stride over to Edward and lift him onto a table. "Practice your cut and thrust," he urged him, stepping back, but standing close by in case he took a tumble.

"For the woman," Teague amended.

"She wouldn't ask it of me," Jack tossed back over his shoulder.

"Course she wouldn't. That's why I am suggesting it. So, you can throw your barbs at me, instead," he said, striking a low chord.

"What would you have me do? Become a farmer? A collector? Or a consort?"

Teague smiled slowly. "Your manhood piqued, Jackie? Don't want to tie yourself to a woman that's bound to wear the breeches?"

"I quite admire her in breeches," Jack retorted, as he reached out and adjusted Edward's grip, narrowly avoiding a jab to the side of his head.

"I can do it," Edward lisped insistently.

"I know, I know, mate, but your father would want you to have better form than that."

"That's the rub, isn't it, me boy?"

"I assure you that there is no source of discord between Lizzie and me. We're as happy as clams. Quit trying to raise a breeze for your own amusement."

Teague rested the guitar flat in his lap. "You've never did like to share. Couldn't be made to share with Annie when you were just a babe."

He had not heard his sister's name spoken in fifteen years at least. Only two years his junior, she had been dead some twenty years, having died when she herself had been delivered of child.

"It wasn't Annie so much I took issue with." It was Annie's mother. The woman in whose care he was left for nigh on a year, when Teague sailed off with his mother for an unknown horizon. He had never shared with Lizzie the fact that sometimes mothers were traitors as well. He preferred not to think on it.

"Shouldn't let that pride of yours get in the way, Jackie. If you live to be my age, you'll have to live with the choices you're making now." He raised the guitar once more, arranging his fingers on the strings.

Jack lifted Edward off the table, balancing him on his hip. "I imagine her husband might take issue with the missus setting up house with me, but thank you for the fatherly advice," he grinned.

This time Jack failed to dodge the crack upside of the head, and Edward reared back in his arms with a squeal, so obviously amused by his accuracy that Jack did not know whether to frown at the assault or join in his mirth.

"You see here," he said, turning to address Teague with mock severity, "these Turners are impossible. You can never turn your back."

"Then best not turn your back on them, boy."

THE END


	6. Inopportune Moment

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asked, her breath hitching.

"What does it feel like, love?" he asked, as he leaned forward and caressed the outside of her thigh over the cotton of her breeches.

"Stop," she said, wishing her voice sounded more certain.

He grasped her hip, easing her down into his lap. The muscles in her thighs and calves tightened, ready to flee.

"Why?" he asked, his voice stirring something in her belly.

"I'm married." She was proud of herself for conjuring that up, as her thoughts were failing her at the moment.

"Wouldn't have a husband if not for me." He raised her wrist to his lips, pressing a kiss to her racing pulse. "Left you trapped like a bird in a cage. Downright grim. So, you ask me what I'm doing?" he mused, kissing up her arm. "I'm investigating me wants, Lizzie."

Elizabeth swallowed thickly. "You knew where to find me."

"I stayed away, since you seemed to want to play house."

He reached the inside of her elbow and his warm kisses in that sensitive spot caused her to suck in her breath.

"Somethings are sacred."

She should tug free her arm, but she had known he would assail her in this manner. She had tried to tell herself that he would not, but known better.

"This isn't the life you planned, and retreat keeps pirates alive. Besides, _death_ do us part. You don't owe him anything."

"I owe him my faithfulness."

"Turner comes back in four years…"

"Five." Counting days was like an opium habit: unhealthy but impossible to set aside.

"Five years," he said, more softly, "and you get your second day with him. Then ten more years." He stroked her hair, "How old will you be then, Lizzie? With an immortal, unchanging husband to greet you on the shore? Time and tide, darlin'…you're bound to change. For the better, as far as I can tell, thus far," he added, leering. "Don't look such a boy in those breeches anymore."

His unabashed assessment caused a pulse in her that was hard not to acknowledge.

"You won't find my aging mortal shell unsettling?" she managed to ask, leveling him with a look.

"_Aging mortal shell?_ That how the whelp sweet talks you?" he frowned.

"You won't always prefer younger specimens?"

"Are you choosin' betwixt us, Lizzie?" he purred.

He slipped his hand up her neck and into her hair, pulling her forehead against his. She pressed her hands flat against his chest. Stiff armed, she gained the guarantee of a safe distance—if his lap could ever be safe.

"You're arrogant."

"Aye."

"I didn't come here to choose."

He ran his thumb along her jaw line. "What did you come for then, love?"

"A friend," she murmured, her lips inches from his.

"I got meself enough friends."

"For acts of piracy."

"We're in port, enjoying the local hospitality," he explained. "Won't be takin' anything that doesn't belong to me without proper invitation, savvy?"

"You're suggesting I throw away everything for a roll in the sheets," she demanded.

"I'm suggesting you give up on the notion that you could be content to spend the rest of your life waiting for a day every ten years." He sounded angry: angry with her or angry with William for expecting it of her.

"There are vows and bonds of affection between Will and me and none between us."

His lips brushed hers, ghosting so lightly that she felt his mustache as much as his lips.

"Plenty of affection, my alluring murderess, but you're married, Lizbeth. I can't be exchangin' vows with you."

Elizabeth choked—a sound something between a laugh and a sob. He frowned when she hiccuped instead of beginning to cry, as he had half expected. He eyed her glazed expression and flushed cheeks. Reaching around her, he grabbed her dark red rum bottle and gave it a shake—empty.

"You're drunk," he said, setting the bottle back down.

"Maybe," she said with a sniff.

"Off to bed." He stood up, setting her on her feet. "All by yer onesies," he amended. He twitched his nose, wishing the wench had left half the bottle undrained. He would not have her blaming the drink. "Off to bed with ye, my liege," he crowed, swatting her on the bottom.

"Go to hell, Jack," she said, tossing her hair as she maneuvered past him.

It was good luck she had not seen fit to connect her palm with his face and that the slammed door alone suffered her stinging wrath.


End file.
